paul krugman has the idea that deficits don't matter, not now. we spent some time understanding the thinking behind the theory. krugman is of course the nobel prize winning op-ed columnist for the "new york times." he is also princeton professor. thank you for doing this. so explain, first, specifically why you feel that right now really there is, as far as i can tell, almost no limit to what you would be willing to do in terms of stimulating the economy. >> right now is a time when not spending is extremely disruptive. if the government pulls back, it's destroying jobs and there's no way to offset that. ordinarily if a government spends less the federal reserve can cut interest rates, like we did at the end of the cold war, but we can't do that now because the interest rate fed controls are at zero. so we have no offset and conversely up to, if we increase spending right now it will create jobs and expand the economy. this is a really good time to be spending. won't always be like this. this is not the normal situation. normally we have an econo